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By Suzanna Kerridge, 26 April 2001 17:00

NEWS Tim Payne, director of 9i marketing at Oracle, claimed users could receive a 50 per cent discount credit against licences already purchased under the company's SafeSwitch programme. "Informix customers are worried now that IBM has taken over, as it has been made clear that they will be expected to migrate to DB2," he said. He claimed 500 Informix users had moved to Oracle since February using its downloadable migration tool. Ian Wesley, analyst at Ovum, typified analyst response to the move by calling the offer a publicity stunt and claimed Oracle was little more than a marketing company. "This is what we've come to expect from them," he said. Paul Watson, managing director at a database development company and an Informix customer, also remained unconvinced. "There are no technical merits whatsoever," he said. "It takes significant time, money and resources to move from Informix to Oracle and I can't think of any reason why anyone would want to go to Oracle." Charlie Gary, analyst at Meta Group, explained that Oracle's high pricing structure would discourage many Informix users from taking up the offer. He said: "People will look at Oracle, but even at 50 per cent it is still three times the price of Informix. Even at a 70 per cent discount it is more expensive than Microsoft's SQL server or IBM's DB2." Not even the promise of the latest Oracle database 9i, due for release in May, is enough to tempt Informix users to bail out, said Andrew Parker, senior analyst at Forrester research. "Oracle's record is spotty in the introduction of new versions of software. It's still putting its house in order regarding the previous launch," he said.